Eventide
by Sasami1
Summary: An alien turtle has invaded the sewers, robbed the lair, and poisoned Splinter. Not only do the Turtles have to find an antidote, they have to figure out how to keep a prisoner. Please R&R.
1. Chapter 1

It was Michelangelo that found Splinter. At first it looked as though he was asleep, and Mike wondered why he would lie down on the couch, notoriously filled with potato chips and farts, let alone fall sleep in his robe. But his eyes were open, his jaw slack and unaligned.

"Master Splinter?" Mike called. He jumped the steps down from the front door and was beside the couch, laying hand on shoulder. Not even a blink, a breath. He grabbed wrists, felt both sides of the neck through thinning fur. One hand was digging the shell cell out of his belt while the other grasped a cool claw, infusing it with heat.

"Guys, get back to the lair."

"_What's wrong?"_

"Splinter."

The three brothers made it home double time from Casey's. Their normally silent run now filled with heaving heavy breath as the sewer cement couldn't pass quickly enough beneath them. Leo was first through the door, finding Mike kneeling beside the couch, holding Sensei's hands and gasping watery sobs, still wearing his coat though it must have been seventy degrees in the lair.

Don was in next, and both Leo and Raph were pulling and shoving him to their father. He moved to their urging, not pushing off their sudden bossiness. The whole run home he had been dreading this moment, when he would be expected to conjure a miracle of a unspeakable magnitude. He knelt beside Mike and began the basic operational code he had prepared in transit. Check pulses, listen for breath, command brother to acquire diagnostic tools from lab, estimate temperature, weigh benefit analysis of CPR, they had been gone over an hour already...

"There's a thing on his foot." Mike was blubbering as Don tried to listen for any faint breath. He couldn't hear anything over the sounds of his brothers yelling, and the insistent bleeping of the alarm system. When had he put in a Splinter death alarm?

"Raph, secure the lair," Leo barked. "Mike, you remember how to turn that thing off? Go do it, and clear the lab. Donny, what do you need?"

"Uhh, stethoscope. And bring the telemetry machine. It's the box on the right wall shelf with a bunch of wires." Don gave up on trying to hear anything, and slid his arms under Splinter's back and knees, feeling the weight of familiar sinew and bone, now sagging and limp. Leo was closing and locking the door, Raph had evaporated, and over the bleating of his alarm system Don could hear the rummaging and crashing of Mike trying to find an off switch. "The computer should be on and have a message to mute. Click it." He slid Splinter onto the floor and hastily uncrossed his arms from how Mikey had laid them, beginning compressions.

Elbows locked. Mid sternal line. One to two inch compressions. Yes, the body was cooling. Yes, he was a little blue around the lips. But he simply could not make that cost benefit analysis about withholding any form of care from his own father. He was nearly eighteen, and an adult in many ways. But he could not accept a world without this man who had raised him. His family was small enough as it was.

The alarm turned off, and Leo and Mike returned with a profusion of boxes, arms overflowing with wires. Did his brothers really not know what was in his lab? Don opened his fathers robe wide, flicked out a blade from his belt, and began shaving off swaths of soft grey fur. Next he grabbed the monitor from Mike and tore open the electro-conversion pads. No one stopped him. No one even asked why. He placed a pad below the right shoulder, and the other across the left rib cage. The machine beeped as it read the electrical status of Splinter's heart.

The lair was finally silent.

_UNSUITABLE RHYTHM. CONVERSION CANCELLED_. The machine's message ran.

"What?" Don smoothed the pads down again, making sure they were flush against skin.

"What's wrong? Is it not going to work?" Mike asked, the tears at bay, his face wiped dry.

"It's a second hand machine, might not be reading correctly. I can override it. It's supposed to work if it doesn't sense a heartbeat... I need the sticky pads to hook up the rest of the monitor and see, they're in the left cabinet next to the... nevermind. If it says 'conversion ready' hit the big button and stand back." Don took a few giant steps up and over the couch and ran into his lab. It looked like a tornado had been through. He picked his way through the mess and to the med cart, pulling out a sheet of sticky foam pads from under a box of alcohol swabs. He glanced at the security monitor, still blinking, and took a moment to review the cameras. It would do them no good to all be standing around while the Foot were charging down the tunnels. Everything looked presently clear from the 23 cameras, and he checked the signaling report from whatever had tripped the alarm. It was a series of trips, and he watched the disjointed video his program strung together from 6 cameras. Then he rewound and watched again as a lone dark figure approached the lair from the west, later leaving with an armful. He rewound a third time to pause on a shot revealing a familiarly rounded back.


	2. Chapter 2

The trail lead them towards a pooling station. However, the actual trip there was quite time consuming due to all the adjunct tunnels to clear, and the fact that Leonardo wouldn't split up the away team. Though Raphael was stealthy, the dart Donatello had pulled from Splinter's foot after establishing he did, indeed, have a heartbeat, was rather foreign. Unlike anything the foot or the purple dragons had been spitting at them lately. Leo didn't want to imagine his brother being turned to stone without someone to land a hay-maker in return.

So they crept, bound in silence. It took over an hour to clear their way to the pooling station. It was a fairly-clear water grotto, which contained a number of underwater passages deeper underground, some even leading to the river. They would come here once in awhile as children, though Splinter's fear of them being swept down some channel made those times few and far between. If their intruder had entered the sewers from here it would impossible to know which underwater entrance they had come from. And from which they had left.

Whatever luck it might be, their visitor was still at the grotto when they came to that last long passage. Though the sewers are traditionally dim, a glow of artificial light faintly lit the bricks. Above the sound of flowing water was the soft grating of metal against metal. Though Leonardo couldn't hear it, he sensed Raphael pulling his sai.

~~~  
_"I don't know what he took." Donatello had said, turning the little beetle shaped dart over in his hand. "But he was in a damn hurry."_

_"Well yeah, he just robbed us. And attacked Master Splinter." Michelangelo glowered._

_"I mean he may be gone already. If you do find him though, try and bring him back alive. He looks like..." Don trailed off._

_"What?" Leo prompted._

_"He looks like a nasty little thief." Raph answered. "I'm going to stab him through the neck, see how'e looks then."_

_"He looks like he has a shell. I thought it was Mike five years ago on the tape."_

It did look like Mike. That scrawny mid-growth spurt Mike. Kneeling beside one of the benches Don had brought down a few years ago, he was pulling apart some bread loaf sized apparatus by lantern light. His face wasn't green, but nearly black, with sand colored splotches up and over his head. The rest of his coloring was obscured by a dark jumpsuit. A large pod was parked nearby, with a door open into it. What Donatello would term 'dodads' and 'whatzitts' were strewn on the ground, in addition to a bag of barbecue pretzels Don normally kept guarded in his lab.

Leo and Raph watched for a long time, just outside the ring of light.

The dark turtle was pulling apart pieces of some device encircling a large rock, and fitting them to another device. He ate absent minded fistfuls of pretzels and wiped his hands off on his pants. Leo felt the nudge of Raphael's shoulder against his. He nodded, and stepped forward first, still silent, though his heart was nearly racing.

They were only eight feet away and still unnoticed in the dusky light. Raph stopped beside and just behind Leo and waited for the next silent signal. He didn't recognize any of the whazitts on the ground, any could be a weapon.

"Find what you're looking for?" The turtle spun at the sound of Leo's voice, landing on his shell and scrambling to his feet. His eyes were wide open now, and his mouth gaped at them. Leo stood stock still, so Raph did as well. The turtle spoke something garbled and foreign that sounded like it might be a question. "I'm not sure where you're from, but breaking into our home and attacking our father isn't the best kind of introduction." The turtle began to shake that keyed up adrenalin shake. Leo, with an intense calm, walked to a farther bench and sat, never breaking eye contact. "A good first step in remedying the situation would be to give us the antidote to whatever it was you stuck him with." The turtle, inky terrified eyes locked to Leo, shifted one foot then the other back, toward the open water. He ventured something else strange in his tongue, his voice quavering. "Another would be not to try and run." As though he could understand, the turtle turned and made for the water. Leo tossed his head imperceptibly and Raph was flying. The turtle didn't even make it to the pool's edge before Raph tackled him into the cement floor.

That's when the screaming started. Leo looked around for whomever it was that might be coming in to rescue, but there was nothing in the darkness. The water remained placid. The scrawny turtle screamed and struggled as Raphael bound his hands with the red bandana. Leo picked up the bag of pretzels as Raph hefted the thrashing load over his shoulder.

"Shut up, pipsqueak." Raph growled, punching him in the thigh with his free fist. He didn't quiet down though, and as they began the trek back home Leo had to remove his own mask and use it as a gag, walking in step behind Raphael to tie it up. Matching eyes with the dark turtle he saw a kind of terror he was all too familiar with.


	3. Chapter 3

The pod was the size of a small car. Sleek, silvery, kind of burnt looking. There were no standard electronics on it, but it was clearly a vastly advanced piece of technology. Donatello caressed it's curves like a lover.

"This is some crazy shit." He pressed his cheek against it, breathing its foreign and strange scent in. It felt almost warm under his palm.

"Yeah. Are you sure this stuff isn't dangerous?" Leo knelt down to turn over nesting pieces of blackened metal. Don was circling the landing. The first time just to look, the second to touch and smell. Leo expected the licking would come next.

"Pretty sure."

"There'll be time for touring later. Find something marked 'antidote' and let's get back." Leo sat down on the workbench and sighed. He gingerly picked up the hunk of stone and metal beside him the turtle had been working on.

"Don't touch that, it's a bomb." Don peeked over the top of the pod to see his brother turn statue still. Like he could press his own pause button. "Heheh, just kidding. I think." He ducked inside the door to the machine into a cramped interior with two seats. "That's what he took from my lab. It was a gift from the Utroms. They didn't even know what it was for, thought it was an elaborate paperweight. I couldn't figure out what it did either, but if it was meant to explode, I would have done it already."

"That's comforting. Thanks. Have you found anything?"

"I've found a few things, but..." Don sat down in the front most seat, running his fingers across the dash in front of him. If only there way some sort of keyboard.

"But what?"

"...Well, look at this stuff." He leaned back to see Leo. "A few conjectures. One, this is a space ship. The burn marks on it are from coming through our atmosphere. Two, all this crap on the ground looks fancy and all," he laid an arm out to the scattered platinum containers. "but they're all empty. It's like when Mike cleans his room."

Don leaned back inside, pressing his hands against the walls. "If you're traveling at the speed of light, it takes twenty-six years to get to the next star system that could theoretically hold life. I mean, maybe some planet in our system could do it, but probably not. If this guy traveled from the nearest star system at fastest speed we know, he's still been on the road for a long time. He may just be out of supplies."

"And out of the antidote to his own poison? He's not going to drink it because he's out of space juice."

Don snorted. "No, but it might be more than an antidote. We don't know how this alien technology works. Maybe the antidote is also engine oil. Or maybe his species is immune to that particular poison and they don't bother to make one."

"You say alien like he isn't one of us." Leo put the stone down and came to stand in the doorway of the craft. "I don't know astronomy, but I do know the odds on a turtle creature like us arising on another planet are slim."

"As far as we know. Maybe we're just a very successful model." Don smirked, and his hand sunk into a panel, sending a gentle blue illumination through the craft's interior. "Ooh!"

"Donny..."

"It's just the overhead light. Calm down." More panels would shift aside under his fingers, revealing access pads with an unknown language inscribed on them. If only he could get some experts in here, or contact SETI, or publish papers. "He doesn't speak any language that I've ever heard before. The roots don't even sound latin, or greek. He's not green. And he can pilot a damn spaceship. That counts as alien in my book."

"Don's big book of alien qualifiers."

"That's the one." A panel in the wall slid sideways to reveal a swirling mass. It was encased in a sphere of something glassy, and Don cautiously reached in and pulled it out. "This is an amazing find. I need to get Leatherhead over here to weigh in." He gentle tucked the orb into the backpack, next to the other artifacts he guessed might hold a clue to unfreezing his father.

"Do you think you'll be done soon?" Leo ducked his head into the pod, watching Don thoughtfully dismantling his new toy. Like Raph, he had always destroyed the things he loved. It was the precision he used, though, that Raph never understood. "I'd like to check back on Splinter."

"I told you he's stable. And Mikey would have called. We can go though, I've got enough for an afternoon."

* * *

He lunged. Little black turtle with a little black knife. Raph sat on Leo's bed, and watched the kid pull his leg up from kneeling, and launch. A lunging step, and then another to cross the room from where he had been sitting, rising and moving fluidly. The red bandana lay sliced on the floor. Raph had watched him work at it for twenty minutes. Pulling up the ankle of his jumpsuit oh so slowly as he knelt in the back corner of Leonardo's room, thinking he was slick. Raph figured it was some shitty utility knife as he listened to the sound of his bandana being sawed through, the fibers snapping one by one. He tortured that poor fabric.

It was his good mask too. He had some old ones, but they were faded and rattier. This was the mask that made him feel like a hero. And the kid looked him straight in the eyes, and cut it up while the clock ticked.

Raph waited till he was almost upon him. Part of the bandana still wrapped around a wrist like a banner. He waited until the blade was closing in on his eyeball, and then he grabbed that red wrist, and put his other hand on the kid's throat, absorbing the momentum into his arms. He waited another moment, to put the fear of Raph into him. He was making that gag they always did when their airway was closed, and his eyes-which had been so calm and determined-now knew terror. Raph simultaneously stood and flipped the kid onto the mattress, then threw a leg over him and pinned him, still holding him by the wrist and throat.

"Real cute." He growled. Raph's heart was pounding in his chest, which only added to his ire. The throat felt warm, and he could feel a pulse bounding under his fingers. He let go and grabbed the other hand that had been pushing at his shoulder, and raised it up to pin both wrists with his one hand. He took the knife easily and tossed it across the room. It landed near his shredded mask. He glared at the kid again, and grabbed the neck of his jumpsuit. "My father made that for me."

The kid blathered something weird again, and Raph's brain grinded trying to make some sense of it. These words, they didn't make any sense. But he could smell fear. He could smell turtle. The kid smelled more of turtle than he did of human or Splinter, but there was something else there. Something unknown.

"What else you hiding..." Raphael muttered, tearing off the ties that held the front of the suit together. The kid struggled some, but he couldn't move under Raphael as his suit was flayed open, more torn fabric. His plastron was sandy and golden and unscarred, and the sight of it further infuriated Raph. The first outside turtle they meet, and he's some soft little jackwad who's never had a fight. He attacks his father like a coward, robs his house, and destroys his favorite mask! And Raphael can't stop tearing apart the suit, wanting to see more. Wanting to know. Frustrated because he's angry and confused, and the kid is struggling harder and yelling-he never should have let Don take the gag off-and Raph can't stop himself until he hears Leo's voice.

"Raph, stop!" Leo and Don stood in the doorway.


	4. Chapter 4

Six months since the last update, geez! Here's a short chapter to get things rolling again...

* * *

It was a shame, all the torn fabric. Hard to find good clean textiles. The jumpsuit gutted, revealing five more of the beetle-looking darts, needles sheathed, and an embedded network of gossamer thin cables that Leatherhead gasped over. Raphael's good mask, the color of fresh blood, cleanly cut. Michelangelo stroked the silk gently with his finger, never having touched his brother's most intimate garment. Seated with his shell against the door he watched the prisoner, and was careful not to fray the open edge of Raph's forgotten mask.

Don and Leatherhead were stationed in the lab, trying to solve it all. Splinter had been moved into the lab, put on the oxygen condenser, mask sitting awkwardly in his mouth. Leo waited in the lab, bearing silent witness. Raphael's angry stomping could be felt through the concrete floor as he was pushed and pulled by Splinter's eerily prone form. Once again, Leo and Raph two sides of the same frustrated coin.

And the alien, cowering in the corner.

Mike was well acquainted with fear, and couldn't help but feel his sympathy reaching out of his body to embrace the suffering thing. But more than that, it reached to his brothers. It reached up in prayer to a god he didn't believe in to fix everything, to have sympathy for him. Don't take his father.

There was a deceptively soft knock at the door, and Mike stood to let Leatherhead in. He stooped low to pass under the doorjamb, and remained looming in the room, resting a gentle but heavy hand on Mike's shoulder.

"Didju guys figure it out?" He tried and failed to keep the desperation out of his voice. But Leatherhead, thankfully, did not look at him with pity.

"We have cracked one of the devices, and safely extracted the toxin. Donatello's spectrum analysis is underway now, and will reveal what we are working with." He squeezed Mike's shoulder before sitting down slowly on the bed. "It will take some time for the analysis to complete; in the meantime I thought I might visit with you and your guest."

Mike snorted. "Our guest?" He turned back to the intruder, their eyes wide and locked on the giant crocodile. "Don't you have to invite a guest?"

"For whatever reason, he's here." Leatherhead's big maw swung to the black turtle, who pushed himself farther back against Leo's shelf, a couple of books tipping over. "The Utroms taught me several languages in my time with them. Perhaps we could communicate."

"Go for it." Mike knelt back down, hoping to take up less space in the now claustrophobic room. He worried the fabric between his fingers again. Leatherhead smiled with his lips closed, his eyes crinkling in a sign of peace.

"Leatherhead." He spoke softly, placing a clawed hand to his chest. The turtle stared at him owlishly. "Michelangelo." He extended his hand to Mike, and waited.

"…Maybe he's brain damaged."

"He is afraid. If only the situation were different." Leatherhead sighed. "A first encounter ought to be handled with more delicacy." He gave his peaceful smile again, and spoke a few words in a clacking dialect. The turtle continued to stare. Another few words, hissing like steam. It seemed to be an easy tongue for the croc, but the turtle shrank away. "It's been a few years."

"No rush." Mike slid the mask between his fingers, not wanting to tell his friend: yes rush, crack that cashew! Instead he watched, imagining how Leo would assess their guest's posture and plan a strategy for attack. Crouched, ready to bolt, hands stabilized on the ground and shelf, head slightly retracted. Defensive, alert. His black skin looked was a deep charcoal where the light saturated, and soft to the touch. Creamy brown speckles ran down his bicep. As Leatherhead continued to roll marbles out of his mouth, Mike imagined them tasting like coffee, or caramel candies. He rubbed the silk between his fingers, the fresh end fraying, and had to swallow back saliva. Mike realized he was being stared at. Defensive, alert. He blushed.

Leatherhead sang a short tune, his tenor pipes rumbling. The gold eyes darted back, and the alien sang back a few notes. Leatherhead burst into a toothy grin, the turtle to his credit didn't flinch, and the lair's alarm began to blare.


End file.
